


The Committing to Earth

by Sweaters (Guhs)



Series: Pale Danvivor [8]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, M/M, Makes sense though, Pre-war flashbacks, Precursor to Nate/Danse, Sad, Wakes & Funerals, Why was Nate never that goddamn sad, mention of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-09 20:08:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19893616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guhs/pseuds/Sweaters
Summary: Nate comes back for Nora one last time.





	The Committing to Earth

The icy underground. Unforgiving steel walls. The unmistakable, overwhelming smell of  _ rot _ . No freezer can contain this many bad smells. A chill hits the body as soon as the platform lowers below the earth and the doors slide shut above. A tomb.

Familiar pathways, familiar steps, doors and seals left open by the unlucky fuck who left here last, the unlucky fuck who was coming back now.

A long walk down a short room. Rows of freezers. Water pooling around his boots; very little ice left now among the poorly sealed units.  _ The smell _ . One unit left open, parallel another. “Is that-”  _ Yes _ . “Take all the time you need, Soldier.” A hesitant hand on a shoulder, heavy retreat.

Carrying her back was the hard part. Her unit had been resealed, preserving her until he could come back.  _ ‘I’ll find who did this. I’ll get our baby back, and I’ll come back for you.’  _ He’d kept one promise; now it was time to lay another to rest. No words between the two men as her body, wrapped in a sheet from the bunks, was brought through the metal deathtrap, back up to the surface. Down the hill. Across the bridge. Back home. He had dug that hole for hours the night before; the perfect depth, the perfect size and shape. It had to be. Right beneath her favorite tree; they’d planted it the day they moved in, and she was so excited about the prospect of their baby growing up with their very own handpicked apricots to eat.

The tree had been completely fried by the radiation. She’d hate to see it now, but at least he could remember it as it was. Maybe she could nurture it back to life one last time the way they always had after harsh winters and bad storms.

He placed one last kiss on her clammy, lifeless forehead before she was covered back up and lowered into the earth. Several hands working to throw the fresh soil back into place, covering the death with new possibilities. A picket-fence cross hammered into the ground by a large metal gauntlet.

Nobody wanted to speak, but a certain synth broke the silence. “Want me to say a few words?”

And he thought. She deserved words - she deserved all of them, all the light and good, all the sweet and the saccharine and the  _ real  _ and funny and the sad and the heavy. There would never be anything good that she wasn’t deserving of, but he still had to say, “No.” Because this is not how he would remember her.

Once the crowd cleared and the sun had rolled back in its sockets to reveal its counterpart, The Moon, it was only him. The heat, the cool earth, the rustling, dead apricot tree, and its equally dead, newly interred companion. He stood at that plot of dark soil then lowered to his knees, unsure if he felt any sadness, if he felt anything at all that wasn’t physically tangible. He knew that he felt an emptiness he never acknowledged after that first week out. There was some part of him that ached to dig that grave up with his hands, to climb down into the earth and become a part of it, too. There was another part that recalled those old horror flicks they’d see every year around Halloween, and that same part hoped that she would climb back out because he would take her whether she was alive or undead.

He didn’t feel sad. He didn’t grieve. He felt nothing except for indescribable, unfathomable loneliness, like a well deeper than the ocean itself that his bucket could never pull from. Maybe he could get close, but he would never reach that last litre of water at the bottom. He would never get her back, and nothing could ever replace her or their life together. He couldn’t live without water, and it was unattainable.

“Words.” He could barely form them. “Too many; not enough to describe you. This isn’t the way it was supposed to go, but you know that.” Clammy cold despite the heat. “I wish we could’ve seen our son grow up. Sent him off to college or helped him through whatever he wanted to be and do. Supported him through his first relationships, his hard times, his good times. I wonder what our grandkids might’ve looked liked if we had any? What their names might have been, who their other parent would be. Would he still have ended up a scientist? Maybe a lawyer like you, or maybe he would’ve enlisted like his old man. He’s… he was a great leader, probably gets that from you more than me. You commanded a room with charisma, I was never that slick. Oh, the things we could have had, the things we should have seen.”

A figure loomed in the background undetected.

“I’m not sure how I went this long without you. Maybe I just-- maybe I just shut off? Kind of like I used to back before my discharge. The stress and the trauma, after Anchorage it was just-- … you know. You remember. Anchorage was hard for both of us.” He breathed, took a moment to feel the thick breeze. When he opened his eyes on that apricot tree, he was briefly back to Before. Healthy green leaves with plump, pale orange fruits and a bright sun casting gold over both. Dewy grass under his fingers, the smell of apple pie somewhere up the street. The sound of the TV, faint through the open kitchen window.

_ ‘Hon, the food’s here! Come inside, it’s hot!’ _

He turned around, and the world turned grey. Boarded-up windows, patched holes, dead grass and the very distinct smell of radiation burn  _ somewhere  _ along the atmosphere. He let out a ragged breath when he finally faced the grave in front of him once again.

“I guess that’s all over, huh? I’ve just gotta keep on going without you, with nothing left. No wife, no son, just this empty house, this dead tree and memories I might lose with age if the radiation sickness doesn’t catch up to me first. That’s the last thing I need; to be immortal and constantly fighting back memories of times gone by and faces, voices I’ll never see or hear again.” Wet-warm droplets on his hands. Slow at first, then rapid. He looked up; the sky was clear. But then he felt the mucus and the distinctive burning in his eyes. The loss finally hit him, after all these months. Just as the moon had its sun, he had lost his.

And there he knelt, completely weeping with his fingers entrenched in the dirt of his wife’s grave as though holding on might keep her from slipping away from him entirely. His body was wracked with the ugliest sobs he had ever heard come out of his mouth, and it felt like they were coming from deeper than he’d ever touched. He was alone, and he always would be alone.

And when his body had finally exhausted itself, when his tears had run try and his throat could no longer handle the sounds, he let his mind go as numb as he felt.

A figure no longer clad in heavy armor made itself known, broke him out of his trance with an authoritative hand on the shoulder and an offering of canned water. He leaned against a leg for stability, finally allowing his swollen eyes to look up from the cursed earth.

**_HERE LIES NORA E. THOMAS_ **

**_08/16/2045 - 2227_ **

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are, folks. It always bothered me how Nate/Nora's death was never properly touched on, like I PROPER hated it. The Sole never seemed too bothered by the fact that their literal spouse was shot right in front of them as their baby was stolen. So this touches on that.  
> If I do end up actually writing a chronological series, I'll probably make Nate quite a bit more angsty to actually fit the way he SHOULD be in this sort of situation. But, y'know, it's me. Stay tuned. Or don't, I ain't ya mam.
> 
> @HowRis: I'm thinking up some stuff to do with Nick soon! Iono what I'm gonna do cause I don't often fuck w/ him that much in-game, but I do wanna deal with him more. He's always a sidekick and never really a leading man, so I wanna see what shit I can rustle up. Also -- puppies! Someday!
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed, and even if you didn't... well, shit, thanks for reading anyway. I'm not Kephen Sting and we all know it.


End file.
